Thankfully I was able to use the low poly blunderbuss to make the basis of the rifle, simply make the barrel longer and bring in the end of it to make the barrel even and smooth.

High poly:

Finished baking and texturing:

The count was added in the high poly, but was not prominent enough, so I painted over it in Substance to make it look like it was branded into the wood. This is supposed to represent the owner’s kills of whatever the owner is hunting.

So, first out into the modelling is the silver sword. Starting off with a cylinder I merely tilted it 90 degrees and resize in that direction. I then moved edges on top and bottom to get closer to the shape I want.

In the end I decided to not have the dip in the back on the low poly and instead model that in the high poly. It worked beautifully.

Swords are all nice and fancy, but how about those times when you do not want to get near the danger and want a way to still neutralise said danger?

The obvious answer is ranged weaponry, which in our case will be flintlock weapons.

However, a full flintlock mechanism would take a lot of work, so for the sake of time (and my sanity) I looked for simpler alternatives and what I found was percussion locks:

While they’re not the simplest, half of the mechanism (the “nipple” and cap) is way simpler.

On to the actual weapons I need:

A blunderbuss:

And rifles:

These should be the two only variants I’ll need. More to come if I see the need for more.

The upside in terms of efficiency is that making one will speed up the process of the other, since I could possibly take the first and make the necessary modifications to turn it into the other. This allows me to pay more attention to the details than otherwise.

Now, after having figured out the generals of the environment for the scene, I turn my attention to weaponry. This scene is meant to be that of a party of hunters, most likely of supernatural creatures, so silver will be a theme, as will religious paraphernalia, though to a lesser extent.

Let’s go for the most obvious; the sword. While looking for swords I came upon a few good examples and the first picture I liked in this was:

Not too bad, but this seems too thin and brittle! After going through a couple more I finally found something more suitable:

Thicker, more sturdy.

The hand guard seems somewhat thin and brittle, still, but since this would be used on creatures, not other humans with swords, this will do just fine.

My idea for a narrative driven scene was initially two things; a small forest clearing with a camp in it and a circular room, presumably in a tower, with bookshelves. In the end I decided the room would be too much work for the time allotted and the forest clearing would, ultimately, be more interesting both to make and to explore.

So I set out to figure out what the story was, what assets I would need and what the overall theme would be. I settled on a late medieval theme, with magical elements both in the camp and the forest itself.

My mindmap for the scene.

The narrative I’ve settled on is a small band of people hunting otherworldly beings, hence the silver bullets (if I can find a way to make it obvious this is what it is). At some point during the night the camp was disturbed and everyone ran in one direction leaving an assortment of items in their wake. Whether they ran after or from something should not be clear, but a set of eyes should be seen in the trees when getting close enough.

The forest should appear ancient and magical and my idea for the magical part was to have some small, subtle, blue orbs flying around the area.

During my research I found that really, the orbs I was thinking of were quite common in fantasy and seems to have been inspired from fireflies, originally, but had the colour modified to seem mysterious. It works well, because fireflies have a warm glow to them, whereas a blue light is colder and unnatural, making the whole thing seem a little strange.

As the board shows I ended up finding the bottom middle picture and found myself liking the slight mist, the moss and the density of the trees.

The moss gives the trees and the forest floor an old look that fits nicely with the orbs’ mysterious look. The mist on top of it adds a slightly eerie look that would be really nice to have hanging in the area, possibly even for use to obscure the edge of the scene from view.

After having decided to add moss to the area I looked up details on moss growth and where it’s commonly found.

As we can see from this picture the moss seems to be growing mostly on one side (Wikipedia claims the north side, due to the south being more dry when hit by sunlight) and the area seems to be largely ever-greens.